Utah - Part 1

Early Thursday morning, we headed out for Utah. We made pretty good time and made it into St.
George in the early afternoon. We stopped to get some maps at the visitor center and then stopped by to show the kids the St. George Temple. We had lunch and looked around the grounds. We went through the temple visitor center as well.

We still had quite a way to go so we did not linger too long and headed back out on the road to Zion.

When we got near Zion, we scouted the wilderness surrounding Zion National Park for possible camping sites. We found several good possibilities. After we felt satisfied with our camping options, we headed into the actual park for a little while. The kids got their Junior Ranger pamphlets to start working on and we took the shuttle around the park to familiarize ourselves with it. We attended an evening ranger program on how the surrounding rocks were formed. We had a little time before the program was to begin and decided to have dinner while we waited.

Afterwards, we headed out to one of the campsites we picked out earlier. It was not ideal but it worked in a pinch. In the morning, we continued on our way to Salt Lake City.

We drove around a bit to do some shopping and headed back out to Provo for dinner. We met up with some old acquaintances formerly from Riverside. A new convert that moved to Provo to go to school and BYU and some former missionaries.

We were surprised by another former missionary who drove all the way from Idaho to have dinner with us. We were supposed to head back into Salt Lake City but decided to stick around some more in light of our surprise guest. He wanted to do some ice skating while he was there since there are no rinks in Idaho.

We headed over to the Olympic Ice Skating Rink together. Incidentally, the price of ice skating, even at the olympic ice skating rink, is half the price of ice skating in California. Several years ago, we took the girls ice skating for the first time with the cousins for Christmas but I did not skate since I didn't know how to and since it was so expensive, I just hung out and took pictures of the kids. They had fun but Caitlyn was a little scared since she found it pretty difficult. 

Yeung got walkers for the kids so Caitlyn got to get more comfortable on the ice. She even learned a few new moves like how to go backwards (I don't know how much of it she tried without the walker though). By the end of the evening, She was back to skating without the walker. Emily fell quite a few times. I think she was getting a little too comfortable out on the ice. She would zoom by pretty fast occasionally but couldn't always keep her balance still. Although I do not have any pictures to prove it, I did get out on the ice and by the end of the evening, I could skate fairly well enough. I am happy to report that I did not fall once.

Unfortunately, it was really late by the time we left. We were expected at a friends house a couple hours ago. The days are really long out in Utah...plus the time difference so we did not realize quite how late it was. We sent them a message and said our goodbyes and continued on our way.

We spent the night at the Sorenson's house (also formerly of Riverside). We got up early in the morning to do some climbing in Little Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch Mtn. range. It is where the granite was taken for the building of the temple and where the family history vault is. 

We picked out a climb called The Schoolroom (5.6). It is a multi pitch climb up 5 relatively short pitches for a total of 400 feet. It had a little of everything on the route...cracks, chimney (which actually turned out to be more of a off-width), slab climbing, including some traverses.

Because of all our traveling and late nights hanging out with old friends, the girls were pretty tired and ended up napping on one of the pitches while Christian was leading.

I guess it didn't help that it was so very warm out too. There was a short chimney/off-width section that everyone had a lot of trouble with. Christian couldn't get his gear through it and the girls did not enjoy it at all.

Then we had to do a rather precarious traverse across the slab under the roof. Luckily, we had some slab climbing instruction which helped us be more confident across this part.

It was easy going after that. We had to down climb a bit down to some rappel rings and were able to get back down to the bottom. We had dinner and headed back to the Sorenson's house. We ended up having to use their house as our base camp as we could not find any safe disbursed camping in the area.

The next morning was Sunday, so we had breakfast with the family and went to church a their ward...which, incidentally, was right next door! We had some lunch and had to gather the troops together for our next outing. We went to visit the Salt Lake Temple and took a look around temple square. 

First we took a tour of the conference center.

A lot of the original gospel art paintings are displayed there. There is also a neat garden on top of the building.

We walked over to the temple after and took some more pictures.

We continued our tour into the tabernacle and the visitor center.

The grounds were pretty, I guess. The girls really liked the flowers but I kind of expected something a little different. We were a little disappointed in the experience. It was pretty crowded. There were homeless people sitting out, begging for handouts. There were young couples, sitting out on the lawn, making out. There were buildings that seemed to tower over around the temple (including other church owned buildings). 

Christian and I came by here many years ago, but it was nighttime. A lot of the buildings were closed. We went into the tabernacle and listed to the organist practice and always wanted to come back to take a better look around.

We had another late night. Levi had to prepare to go on a camping trip with the scouts the next morning and we had planned to go on a hike with the rest of the family the next day. The girls stayed up late every night whispering and talking to Phaedra.

The next day's hike was not at all what we planned. Phaedra got a new puppy and they wanted to take him along. When we got to where we planned to do our hike out to a lake, we found out that dogs were not allowed and we had to turn back. We ended up hiking up the American Fork instead. We chose a hike that took you to the base of Mt. Timpanogos.

There was a light rain on and off. The other family was not very prepared so at some point, they got cold and tired and didn't want to continue.

We said our farewells and took our leave of our friends and continued on our way for a bit. At some point near the base of Mt. Timpanogos, we saw what the climb to the peak would entail and decided that we did not have the time nor were we equipped to continue any further and headed back. It was a beautiful hike. Christian wants to go back some day to do the actual peak some day.

We had lunch at the parking lot. We found that Phaedra left her muddy shoes where they parked. We stuck around for a bit while we had our lunch but we didn't think they would come back after a bit. We threw the shoes in a bag and continued on our way back to Zion to meet up with Christian's family the next day.

Busy Nothings

The girls had a bunch of more play dates with Lily, including going to the movies (they went to see the new Minion movie), more swimming and playing Wii. It is very convenient since they seem to get along pretty good and we like her parents. Lily is Emily's age and I guess they kind of met in the 2nd or 3rd grade but they were never really friends...just acquaintances. Her parents moved her out to the local GATE magnet school and then to STEM shortly after. But since they live in the neighborhood, we would run into them on walks and stuff now and then and slowly got to know them a little bit.

Another family in the neighborhood from church invited us to go swimming at their house. I am her visiting teacher but hardly ever get in to see her as she is pretty busy and has been working a lot these days. She has three boys but she is kind enough to have us over now and then during the summer so I can count the visit! On this occasion, she also had the Deans over so Emily and Caitlyn were over the top thrilled about it. Of course, any chance to swim, is enough to motivate them anyway.

All the play dates with other kids have helped me get the kids to do their chores which they normally will procrastinate and whine over...so that is always a good thing but after Emily hurt her finger cutting apples, I have been left with all the work of putting up the rest of the apples for the season so that has been tiresome and time consuming for me.

In addition, we have had some other dinner guests which also provide extra work cooking and cleaning and meanwhile, we are frantically trying to get ready for our next trip. We were originally supposed to go to Wyoming to climb the Devil's Tower, but with Emily's hurt finger and our recent experiences in climbing, we decided that in the end, we are not quite ready for it. The Devil's Tower is a very popular classic climb and we are just not confident that we can all get up quickly enough. There are so many people on the route all the time that they are all on top of each other. Christian had been reading about a lot of horror stories about people's experiences on it which made us think twice about going this year.

So, in the end, we are still going on our trip, but we are no longer going to Wyoming for this reason. We are no longer going to Montana because we were going to try to coordinate our trip with Christian's dad to visit with Christian's uncle but he went while we were supposed to be in Yosemite (which ended up to be just Mammoth). So all that is left of our plans is Utah and that is where we are headed shortly.

Suicide Rock

We went to Idyllwild again but this time to climb on Suicide Rock. It was quite crowded. There was a big group of mountain rescue people practicing up on one of the routes. There was also a guide next to us with a group of people learning to climb next to us.

We climbed a relatively easy route called Little Murders (5.3) but we did a slightly harder variation through a squeeze chimney above the middle of the route. Christian and I couldn't quite fit through the very top opening and had to squeeze out the side to continue up.

It wasn't too difficult until you started going up the chimney...then it got a little spicy as the opening of the flake was wider at the bottom and the top was super narrow so it felt like it wanted to spit us out. Of course, Caitlyn is so small that she climbed the slab under the flake without hardly even having to use the other side for support as she seems to be our slab master. She says that she is not that good at slab climbing, but every time a climb gets hard, whether it is a chimney or crack, she ends up climbing on very difficult slab next to where the rest of us needs to go in order to get up.

It is pretty difficult taking pictures in the shadows when the sun is so bright out. The contrast is too great and since Caitlyn is so tiny, I could not quite get any pictures of her in between the flake.

While we were climbing and waiting for each other, we listened in on the guide giving instructions to his students on slab climbing. Usually, the guides that we run into out on climbs are fairly clueless. They usually, don't give that much instruction and usually end up pulling their clients up some moderately difficult climbs just so that they think that they are accomplishing something. This guide wasn't faking it with his clients and was giving some really good instruction.  After we finished "Little Murders" and his group moved off, we decided to try out some of his instructions on the slabs that they were climbing.

We free soloed the descent gully to set up a top rope and went up and down the slab three times each using different routes. We know that one of the routes was called Innominate II (5.8) so they were not easy climbs but we all were able to do it using the technique he explained. I think that it helped a lot.

We didn't get to climb one of the climbs that we were planning on because it was so crowded but we ended up being pretty satisfied as we feel that we made some definite progress in our climbing!

July 4th

July 4th was spent, as usual, with our friends' the Deans. We have a bbq and potluck. The kids play and we watch fireworks.

There was no fire on Mt. Rubidoux from the fireworks. Then, by the end of the evening, we inevitably had to fight with the kids about leaving as they never want to leave their friends, no matter how late it gets.

Miscellaneous Climbs

Since we returned from our latest camping trip early and Christian still had some vacation time left, we went on a couple of local climbs.

We began by going to Tahquitz since we have had so much trouble getting there. We climbed a route called The North East Rib which is supposed to be a 4 pitch (700') climb rated at an easy 5.3. We did not find it quite so easy. We did not expect the so called approach to include off widths, a chimney, and a layback. We didn't even expect to rope up through any of that. When we got to the "start of the climb" we had to pull up an overhang which is simply ridiculous for a 5.3. We got passed it but while we were working on it, we heard thunder and got some water sprinkled on us. Past the overhang is a steep slab climb up mossy rock which seemed like a really bad idea during the rain. We did not know what to expect past this section either since we all agreed that the climb was rated very badly and decided to bail. We think that what we encountered on this climb so far would have been more aptly rated at 5.6...which is totally still within our range, but not at all what we expected.

We were pretty frustrated by the end of the day. To add insult to injury, we got eaten alive by mosquitos when we got back down.

After a few days, we were still disgruntled about the North East Rib and decided to wash the bad taste of it by going on another climb. Christian wanted to go back to the rib to conquer it once and for all but none of the rest of us wanted to look at the thing again any time soon. This time, we went to a new area near Lake Matthews called Ortega Falls.

The drought has rendered the falls completely dry, so there were no crowds and we could easily belay from the bottom of the falls which was bone dry. 

We climbed a dihedral (5.7). Since this climbing area is pretty small and there are only a few climbs within our range, we each climbed it twice before it got too hot.

We all thought it was a pretty fun, but challenging climb. Christian even had us practice falling near the top since the fall would be clean and it would give the girls an idea of what it feels like to fall. I, personally, have already had the experience but gave it a try as well. 

The idea of it freaked the kids out a bit but they were little troopers about it and did as they were told.

Afterwards, Christian did one more climb on the line next to this one on a route called "Fingers." It was a 5.9 finger crack.

We had to call it a day by early afternoon as we had dinner plans with Lily's family (the family we went to Mammoth with) that evening and I needed to finish up an apple pie for dessert that I had started the night before.

Mammoth Mtn.

We had the car all packed up the evening before leaving on our camping trip. When we got up in the morning, we basically just had to get into the car and be on our way. We made it up into Bishop just after lunch and we had a late lunch at a park there. We did our rounds through the mountain shops before continuing on our way. We had some clothes on consignment at a used gear shop that we wanted to check on. We got about $90 for some clothes we couldn't use anymore but ended up getting a cheap set of gaiters for one of the kids with part of the funds. We took the rest in store credit.

We got to Mammoth in the late afternoon and stopped by a few more mountain shops. We were looking for a big pot for our camp stove. We had an old one that is over 25 years old probably but we have to be real careful how and where we pack it because the edges could cause damage to the pack so we thought that since we are doing a lot of camping these days, that we would get an upgrade. Unfortunately, all the nicest new pots are made especially for specific stoves these days. And since they no longer sell the fuel for our backpacking stove anymore, it was something we would have to consider before buying a new pot.

We finally got to our friends' campsite in the early evening but they were running late and had not yet arrived, so we decided to hike around a bit and see what we could find. They were camping in the Twin Lakes Campground. We hiked up a field of scree to investigate some rock croppings above one of the lakes.

Christian found that the rock up there was very chossy and not of good quality. While we were up there, we saw our friends' car pull into the campground, so we decided to head down and meet up with them. They were still setting up camp when we got back down. We had dinner together and made plans for the next day. We then took off to our normal wilderness campsite just outside of the city. Unfortunately, it was very dry and dusty.

In the morning, we went back to break our fast with the rest of the group. Our friends were also camping with another family that they knew and both families had a daughter Emily's age. Our girls quickly made a new friend and all the girls got along great. We took the girls and headed towards McLeod Lake. A short hike brought us to a short, easy climb we thought we could take the girls on. One of the girls had never been rock climbing before and the other had only climbed at a gym a couple of times so we thought that it might be something fun and interesting for the kids to do. Plus, because it was so easy, we didn't worry about Emily putting any undue stress on her injured finger.

We all took a turn on the first climb, Fun-gi. Even the parents of Emily's friend went up this one. Christian, Caitlyn and I went on a slightly harder route called "No Applause." Christian did an additional one called "On The Count of Three" which was a bit more challenging. It was pretty hot and dry out there and the girls were a little overwhelmed with the experience and wanted to relax by the lake.

We had a snack and headed back to meet up with the other girl's parents. They did ride by on their bicycles once while we were climbing but we wanted to find out what their plans were as we did not want to intrude too much on their plans. They were still out riding when we got back so we had some lunch and rested. Emily's friend was not feeling well as she started getting sick just before the trip.

When other set of parents returned, the girls took off for a bike ride but the hills was a bit challenging for Caitlyn as she had not had any experience on a bike with hand breaks nor in changing speeds on the bike. Luckily, Christian jogged along with her and helped her out a bit as she could not keep up with the older girls.

Meanwhile the moms took a walk over to the lakes. When everyone returned again, we discussed what we would like to do next. We decided to go check out the Mammoth Consolidated Gold Mine.

I think that it was the only thing that all three families ended up doing together besides just hanging out at their campsite and having meals. We did return to their campsite afterwards to have dinner. The girls played games while they waited for dinner.

The girls were still having lots of fun together but we were afraid that our presence was too disruptive to their plans since the other two families did plan this vacation together, and Christian was getting restless to go do something bigger than the tourist thing and hanging out around camp. Therefore, we decided to continue on our way to Yosemite the next day and bid farewell to our new friends.

Unfortunately, Christian wasn't feeling so good during the last part of the day and so when we got up in the morning, we decided to doing something smaller until we were feeling 100 percent as what we had planned in Yosemite required us to be in top physical condition. We decided on hiking up to Crystal Crag in Mammoth to do some climbing there. 

We got somewhat of a late start and the parking at Lake George was a veritable zoo. We barely managed to get parking on the side of the road and had to move some big rocks around a bit so that we did not get blocked in by all the other tourists trying to squeeze in by whatever means necessary.

Unfortunately our plans continued to go awry. We headed up the crowded trail up to Crystal Crag but half way up, Christian noticed that Emily was limping behind. We had to toss her hiking shoes away because she had worn them out. Not only is she just nearly as tall as I am, she almost has the same shoe size as me now so we let her use an old pair of hiking boots of mine that I didn't fit anymore since my feet grew a half size after the pregnancies. She said that she fit it and it was comfortable but after all the little hikes the day before, her foot began to get sore.

On the hike to Crystal Crag, she wore a pair of hybrid approach/climbing shoes. They are close fitting and apparently it rubbed her sores the wrong way. We ended up having to bail. 

We considered going back to our friends' camp to see what their plans for the day was going to be. On our way down, we spotted our friends' car at the bottom of the parking area. We know that they were interested in going canoeing. We looked a little around Lake Mary and then up at Lake George but we could not find them. The girls wanted to go swimming so we went back to our car to get swimsuits and lunch. 

We had picked out a spot to return to but on our way back to it, we saw that it was crawling with people now. We gave up and just stopped by a spot on the side of the trail to let the girls play a little in the water. Unfortunately, it was cold and was filled with gnats. When we got there, it was breezy so there were no bugs, but every time the wind died down, the air around us was filled with bugs. The kids waded in the the cold water while we fixed lunch.

After lunch, we headed out again. Our friends' car was still in the area so we knew that was a lost cause. We ended up getting our new backpacking stove on our way out of town. We got a discount on it and we were able to use our store credit from the consignment branch of the store with it. 

In the end, we decided to cut our losses. With Emily's hand hurt still (although it was healing nicely) and now with her feet sore, there was not a whole lot that we could do. We definitely could not do any of the things we had planned for Yosemite.

We did stop by Convict Lake for it a bit since we had some time to kill. We did not plan to return home in the middle of traffic. We had planned to leave after dinner and drive through the night to avoid traffic. It was very windy down by the lake. In fact, the lake looked almost more like the ocean.

We were excited to try out our new stove in the wind. One of the big gripes we have with our previous stove (besides the fact that no one can get the fuel canisters outside of Africa these days) was trying to use it when there was a breeze. It was difficult to light and if you could keep it lit and not blow out in the wind, it would still take a while to heat up our food. Getting it to boil water in the cold with a breeze was basically not possible. 

We decided to take a hike up to the base of Laurel Mountain which towers above the lake. 

Caitlyn decided that next year on her daddy-daughter camp out, she wanted to to climb to the top of Laurel Mountain. It was a really beautiful area. Emily was back in her hiking shoes and she was a little slow but shoe was doing okay until about halfway back to the truck when she started limping again.

She made it back down and we had dinner. The new stove was fabulous! In the high wind, we were able to light and bring two liters of water to a boil in 3 minutes. It more than lived up to the advertising claims. In fact, it exceeded all expectations.

Plans Gone Awry

Summer has been pretty unstructured this year. I have no packets for the kids to work on. We are mostly working on getting chores done...teaching the kids to work harder and to take some responsibility in our home. The first week went pretty well for the most part but the bickering and petty fighting started cropping up before the week was done.

Our apples are ready so we have been spending a lot of time harvesting apples and making apple sauce, dried apples, apple cake, apple bread and apple pie. The kids had been helping do a lot of it this year. In between chores and things, they have gotten to go swimming several times at a neighbors house. Some friend's of ours were actually house sitting this house for the week and had invited the girls to go swimming. It was very convenient as the house is just up the street.

For Father's Day, we were going to attempt, yet again, to go climbing at Tahquitz. Unfortunately, Christian got sick and was not quite up to going. To make matters worse, he was called earlier in the week to give a talk during sacrament meeting on Sunday. He had not quite finished it come Saturday so he had to put some time aside to finish it up. He did take a break to get relief from the unbearable heat by jumping in the pool with the girls for a while. So once again, we did not make it to our climb in Tahquitz. I think we have tried at least three times now since Mother's Day and have not made it thus far.

On Sunday, after Christian gave his talk, we left church early to go visit with my mom. Although it is Father's Day, we didn't exactly visit with my father (although, we did see him). His dementia has progressed so far that we cannot be sure that he knows who we even are any more. He seems to respond well to us but we will tell him who we are and my mom will ask him if he knows who we are and he will say "no." He hardly knows who my mom is sometimes now...which although disturbing and disheartening, has made him somewhat more polite.

Anyway, we visited with my mom as she needs the company and we made zongzi (粽子) as it was that time of year. A lot of my mom's grandchildren don't really care for it that much but our kids love it and look forward to having some every year, so my mom will make it just for us. It is very time consuming and labor intensive. We are slowly learning to do it on our own. This year, Christian worked on getting down the method for making the salted eggs. We tried two different methods and have decided that the brining method worlds the best. We brought our samples to put in the zong. We have also been working on learning how to wrap the bamboo leaves so that it isn't too tight (otherwise the rice will not have room to expand as it cooks) and making sure that the zong is wrapped completely so that food does not fall out of it and make a mess or get wasted. It is a rather fine line.

We were getting ready for our big summer Yosemite trip after that. The girls were once again, working on our apple supply to make dried apples for our trip when Emily sliced open the top of her thumb. It was a pretty bad cut. We were not sure if we should take her in to get stitches or not. In the end, we decided to just keep it clean and strapped so we can see if it will just stitch itself together. We had to weigh the possibility of canceling our trip altogether as now she will not be able to climb. After a couple of days, we decided that it was stitching itself up pretty good on it's own and there were no signs of any infections or anything. We went back and forth about our plans (many times). It was pretty frustrating. Meanwhile, Emily could not do any more swimming as we had to keep her bandages and wound clean and dry so that it will heal faster.

In the end, we decided to continue with our plans to go to Yosemite, although we would have to change around our itinerary a bit to make sure Emily had more time to heal and that we did not do anything to challenging. But we also found out that the family the girls had been swimming with was also heading out on vacation the same day we were. In fact, they were going to be camping in Mammoth near where we were going to spend our first night. We decided to meet them up there and spend a day or two with them before heading into Yosemite.